2009/9/29 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>om>: I agree. Some of my teachers have set homework tasks and just said 'copy/paste from Wikipedia if you want, I don't care as long as it is done', others have said the complete opposite - 'don't use Wikipedia, it's bad and unreliable'. I have been wanting correct those teachers who have said it is wrong in pointing out some of the main policies concerning reliability of content and sources, but I haven't had the chance yet. I do think it's shocking though, the divide. I haven't yet mentioned I contribute to Wikipedia, I did in my last school and they didn't really care. ;) -- Regards, Isabell Long. <isabell121(a)gmail.com> [[User:Isabell121]] on all public Wikimedia projects. Freenode Community Co-Ordinator - issyl0 on irc.freenode.net PGP Key ID: 0xEB83C2BD (PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE)

Isabell Long wrote: The biggest danger with the attitude of some teachers is that encourages plagiarism. I see nothing in what these teachers say to encourage giving credit to Wikipedia, not to mention the individual contributors to an article. For some students, who find any kind of writing too difficult and from whom any written output at all is a major triumph, it may not matter since they will never write anything else once they leave school. Some others, looking for an easy way to complete an assignment, may use Wikipedia even when they are told not to, and will fail to give a proper source to avoid criticism for using it. Ec

If I understood well, Lars has written that _making_ publicly connections between Wikipedia and bad habits around its usage, is bad for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a powerful tool. And as every powerful tool, it can be used in a good or bad way. We should clearly point out what are those good and bad habits, strongly encourage the good ones and even stronglier discourage the bad ones. This should be a part of Wikipedia's "marketing strategy". I hope such a clear position and strategy would help to stop making connections I wrote about above. I know wikipedians already do something like this. However, according to Lars' report, it seems we (or at least Swedish wikipedians) don't do enough. We shouldn't create only the best encyclopedia but also create and propagate instructions how to use it, in order to stop the bad habits. But we should in the first place understand why the connections are bad for Wikipedia. We _are_ partially responsible how our tool is used. Jiri On Wednesday, 30. September 2009 0:33:01 Lars Aronsson wrote: --     *        .          .            .                             ...               .                       M45 ..   M1            .  #                . * .                  .                  Jiri Hofman        .                .    Opiskelijankatu 38 B28              .            *                 Tampere                    .       **                 33720                        ¤.     .             Finland                           **. *                                 .                                   .    .   .   *                      *  .   .   .  *            .                       .          .                       *        .                 *                               *              .    *  gsm: +358504661860                    .         .       +358504384197                *            .  http://www.aldebaran.cz/~hofmanj             .                                               *

I think Lars means the copy and paste of information without student's process. But this is done with othe online material as well. Again, as Thomas says, it is in the details how it is done. Wikipedia is an important source for learning if this is the task of people who use it as a free source of serious information. Rodolfo Thomas Dalton wrote: